From the Editor's Desk: Perhaps the hyphen is the source of evil?

So much for a slow summer, eh? We've got two events on the books next week, the Moto X dropping the week after, and we're starting to plan for IFA in Berlin the first week of September. So let's keep things short this week, shall we?

I was sad to see Rolling Stone hop on the "ZOMG THE JAY Z APP IS EVIL" bandwagon. "IT NEEDS FULL NETWORK ACCESS." Yes, Rolling Stone. It needs full network access. Because it connects to the Internet. Just like your app. Rolling Stone was hardly the only offender here, though.

What's the consensus on the album? I'm not enough of a hip-hop fan to intelligently weigh in, though I have listened to the record a couple times.

The more I think about it, the more any sort of Nexus Q successor or whatever Google's living-room play is must include Amazon Instant Video. Otherwise I'll be sending my screaming toddler to Mountain View to rain fire and brimstone and more whining and crying than one father can stand. Girl's gotta have her Dora.

I'm curious to see how much not having optical image stabilization will affect how much I like/use the HTC One Mini. NFC, Snapdragon 400 and a 720p display I'll probably be OK with.

Work continues on the official Android Central App. I think for the next release we'll play with Google's staged rollouts, just to see what it's like on the back end.

Interesting note: A little less than a week after we pushed out v1.3 (to the beta group first, and to everyone a couple days later), nearly 80 percent have updated. To the 689 people who are still on the very first version we published, we considerately ask, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

Only one mistaken Tweet on Sunday after Phil Mickelson won the British Open. Hell of a round from Lefty. (Yes, I'm in his camp.) I didn't get to watch it live, though, as I took advantage of the one hour it didn't rain this weekend to mow the lawn. Listened to it on the Sirius XM app, though, and I dare say the commentators there made it pretty damn fun.

i assumed it would be pulled at some point... Samsung paid for a million albums and the offer ends (checks MCHG website) July 25th so i guess the million albums were downloaded before then. as for the album? it wasn't terrible, but it's hard to ride the wake of Kanye's latest album with something that's just okay.

The app's sole purpose was to distribute the album, show the lyrics, and promote Samsung/Jay-Z. Once they were all redeemed, keeping it in the Play Store would just lead to people leaving negative comments and not adding much else.

+1 I have the app and the album and once I downloaded the album I never opened the app again. So I deleted it. There's absolutely no point to keep the app on the Play Store when they only had 1 million albums to distribute and 20 Mil were downloaded.

"...as I took advantage of the one hour it didn't rain this weekend to mow the lawn..."

I can relate. Saturday afternoon it absolutely poured down here in Tampa Bay. These late afternoon/early evening showers spawning as a result of the Atlantic and Gulf seabreezes colliding can be really something. The bad thing is, they soak the grass beyond belief, and you need to let the sun dry things out, but by the time that happens, another storm is on the horizon. It can be a vicious cycle.

Fyi, the app did not show as needing to be updated in Google Play. However, when I pulled up the app page there was an update button so I clicked and got the update.

I totally agree about Amazon instant video on the next Google tv/Q device. We use Netflix all the time but there is no good Amazon option so we don't bother with it. I'd love to be able to use both since we ditched cable last year.

I had issues with the Magna Carter app awhile ago but then got it working fine. Before I did though I had written an email to the devs about having issues & I received an email a few days ago & they stated "sorry our records show that you were not one of the one million downloads that received the album". So basically the million downloads were already downloaded & to stop emails complaining about not being able to download the album they have removed the app from the PlayStore. They had given me the response they did because I had accidentally emailed them from the email address of mine that I didn't use to sign into the PlayStore, oops lol. I did however get my download & while I'm not blown away by Jay Z's new album it is a solid album of his story now of livin a good life with Beyonce & being a father, not the party lifestyle he rapped about & lived a few years ago or his street life hustle that he grew up livin. So don't expect it to have any club joints to get your party jumping but it's a decent listen of him bragging that leaves you wishing you were that financially stable in your life lol.

Amazon's obstinate refusal to release an Android app for Instant Video remains a mystery. Apple engineers an illegal conspiracy to price fix e-books and screw Amazon and gets iOS apps for Instant Video. Android has the largest market share and tens of millions of potential Prime subscribers for the taking and they get told to FOADIAF.

I too am interested in confirming the HTC One Mini as the blockbuster for the midrange as was the HTC One as a flagship. Digital image stabilization should be sufficient when combined with image sensors and Image Sense technology will still yield the best pictures among midrange smartphones and some flagships.

It should certainly be more desirable than the plastic Samsung GS4 variant with inadequate internal storage and bloat.

I liked Jay Z's album. And yes I can intelligently say it was good for what it was. A fun album, not meant to be overly complicated lyrically but still better than the A-B-C rap that's been dominating the airwaves for a while already.

And NO, I didn't know he dropped the hyphen. I'm a bad fan I guess. Oh well..

"What's the consensus on the album? I'm not enough of a hip-hop fan to intelligently weigh in, though I have listened to the record a couple times."

Eh...

Jay Z's flow (i.e. delivery, cadence, metaphors, etc) was on point as always, and the production was definitely above average. But Jay's lyrics haven't been good for a while now. None of his recent stuff compares favorably to his early work.

Jay Z's album was pretty good in my opinion is give it a 7.5-8 out of 10. The production was top notch but I felt like he held back on his lyrics on some songs like the one with Rick Ross. Which might be understandable if he didn't want to outshine him too much lol.

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